Comic about Saint Gregory

Acta protestationum, manifestationum relationum, aliarumque transactionum …
1687, Lwow
Book, size 22 x 32 x 13 cm
Manuscript, Latin and Polish.

ANK, Varia – collection of remnants, ref. no. 29/32/17/28

 

Record book of the Lwow region from the pre-war collection of the State Archives in Lwow, where it was stored under the number 451.

The manuscript, besides the typical entries concerning manifestations, protests, oblate documents and privileges, debt receipts and coupons, property contracts etc. contains, on pages 283-766, drawings created with a quill by a scribe working in the Lwow administration office. Initially, a few, entwined in the text as decorative initials, slightly surrealistic images of animals and birds gradually take up more and more space on the pages and transform into a pictorial story presenting mythical figures and scenes or the daily life of noblemen (e.g. the scene of regaining a cannon sunk in water or battle scenes). Some of these drawings, complementing the texts written in the book about Saint Gregory the Enlightener, a martyr and apostle of Armenia from the 3rd and 4th centuries, proliferate so much that they can be regarded as a type of old-Polish comic. Two songs, also written in the book, were illustrated with beautifully drawn images of Saint Anthony of Padua and the Blessed Virgin Mary.